South Africa: Dodging Charging Elephants, African Safari

South Africa: Dodging Charging Elephants, African Safari | South Africa Travel Tips

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South Africa: Dodging Charging

Elephants While on an

African Safari

Author: William R. Sukala

Durban, South Africa 24 March 1999 3:30 a.m. Saturday morning. Alarm clock screeching in my ear as I moan in sleep-deprived agony, trying desperately to shake off the stupor of my brief five hour slumber. My body goes into sleep-preservation mode as I clumsily fumble for the comfort of the snooze button. To no avail, 3:40 rears its ugly head and I'm forced to accept the reality that it's time to wake up for what will prove to be one of the most spectacular days of my existence. Within four hours I am driving through the Umfolozi-Hluhluwe Game Reserve in close comfort with some of the most beautiful, magnificent animals which most only see in the safe confines of zoos.

The night before was filled with a mix of anticipation and anxiety, anticipation for the following day and anxiety for the drive through some hardcore townships en route to the game reserve. Gary and family instilled the fear of God in us when talking about the drive. As I mentioned in my last email, South Africa has crime and plenty of it. Sometimes bad things can happen to good people. I heard all the stories about criminals staging fake accidents or breakdowns to get good samaritan to stop, at which time they are either beaten, killed, or at best, only robbed and carjacked. Rule: don't stop for anything, I mean, ANYTHING. If you plow over a house pet or run of the mill farm animal, keep on driving. You only stop for one thing: nothing! Traffic lights? If it's red, you slow down long before you get to it, and just crawl along until it turns green, at which time you gun it. But you don't stop at a red light that early in the morning. If you do stop and you see some shady characters standing around, you simply run it. Red lights are on par with stop signs, albeit not in a legal sense.

4:40 a.m. The journey begins. My girlfriend, Kimberly, and I motored through the Berea area of Durban on our way to the M4 freeway. Bearing in mind the above discussion on red light safety, we proceeded to get stuck at almost every light along the way, but using the crawl technique we managed to stop at only a couple. The crawl technique entails slowing down a fair distance before the light and waiting for it to turn green, at which time you gun it. If you want to stay alive in South Africa, this is how you live daily life.

On the northbound M4, the early morning South African air was comfortably tropical, burnt smell permeating the heavy humidity. Southern hemisphere constellations still speckled the night sky. The mellow sounds of the Verve's Urban Hymns CD nicely complemented the mood. Mostly empty roads, spare a few AK47-toting taxis here and there. Indeed it was a beautiful morning.

Our turn-off for the N2 toll road at Umdloti (pronounced um-shloti) was just a short distance up the M4. Then the unexpected: a massive fog bank! We made the turn off, but could barely read the signs for the N2. We putted along making certain not to miss the toll road entrance. The last thing we needed was to pull a Columbus at 5am and wind up lost in some Timbuktu township which, I might add, in Africa, is not too far away.

By 5:30, the sun pushed up over the Indian Ocean horizon to the east, eventually illuminating the straw-roofed Zulu huts perched on the hillside to the west. The morning winds groomed the rolling sugar cane fields into green waves against a backdrop of stacked mountains. Indeed, we knew we were in Africa!

The fog burned off soon thereafter which definitely enhanced our comfort level. Up the road about 100 km, we saw what looked like a tree farm. These trees were just perfectly planted in rows for what seemed like an eternity. It's hard to describe but they were so unique, unlike anything I've seen anywhere else in the world. They had these long skinny trunks with the branches and leaves beginning quite high up. And deep green. I swear it was like the green you'd see in New Zealand!!

It's interesting how Durban differs from other major cities in the world. For example, let's say Los Angeles. When you leave L.A. proper, you still have all kinds of development in the surrounding area, be it housing projects, shopping malls, or whatever. There are still signs of life. But when you leave Durban, you are cast straight into the bush. You see a few stray houses here and there, but for the most part, it's quite undeveloped. Come back into Durban and the concrete jungle just slaps you in the face, what with its high-rises, winding roads, and scattered urban decay.

On driving in South Africa. Sure, you think you're bulletproof if you can comfortably drive through Los Angeles, London, or Sydney. Guess again oh naïve city slickers. Now, if I may so bring you up to speed (no pun intended) on African road safety and etiquette or, in some cases, lack thereof.

You're cruising along at, say, 120 to 140 kilometers per hour when all of a sudden the speed limit signs drop down to 80 and then immediately to 60! Whoa Nellie! So you ease off the accelerator expecting a residential area with kids playing in the street. No, nothing. Just a change in speed for the heck of it. I asked Gary, my Durban host, about this later on and he said it was because people walk on the freeway. Many Africans do not own cars and are relegated to hitching or walking to their place of employment. I guess this is believable, but then again, you have people walking all over all parts of the highway, even in the 120 zones.

Speaking of people on the highways, you would not believe what you see. Alright, so you'd expect to see people walking as you might figure they're going to work or something. Again, believable until you see women walking along with children in their arms, all the while skillfully balancing baskets on their heads. Hmm, how about a leisurely stroll along the freeway? There are also all kinds of fruits and vegetables for sale right on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Usually no one stops for fear of being carjacked. Of course, we did stop and proceeded to have quite the morning feast. Ok mom, I'm just kidding.

Did I mention how easy it is to get lost here? The signs are quite nice, but I believe they are poorly placed. Usually, signs are placed BEFORE an exit, right? Wrong. I've missed quite a few exits because the signs are either on top of the exit or immediately after it. Now what kind of logic is this!? You'd expect to see signs a couple of km before then another one as you approach your turn-off. And in all fairness, that is the case here, but they royally biffed it in some locations. So you need to be on top of it. I guess the only places as poorly signed would be Philadelphia or Sydney.

Although the signs are poorly placed, I guess it's better than nothing, which is exactly what you get when you encounter road construction. We're ripping along and then it's, whoa, gotta move over!! And at the last possible second, as your pulling over to avoid the cones and road crew you wonder how idiotic, let alone unsafe, it is to leave the area unposted! I don't even think California's CalTrans is that useless. After you regain your composure, you expect to see a sign that says, "Oh, by the way, um, yeah, slow down for some road work back there." And true to classic road worker form, they're all sitting on their duffs having a chat! Notice how efficiently they work inefficiently!

In my previous correspondence, I talked about how the taxis wield AK47 machine guns. This is no joke and believe me, you don't want to get on their bad side. But as I've learned, this is not an official regulated industry. It's just a bunch of half-baked half-wits driving stolen minivans-turned-taxis that follow a regular route, often overpacking their vehicles to dangerously unsafe levels (not unlike the overpacked Mexican farm trucks). Anyway, these characters have their routes and will stop anywhere and wherever they see a person standing on the side of the road, even on a crowded freeway at rush hour! But the thing is, each route has a hand signal that the person is supposed to know. So I guess the drivers look for the hand signals and stop accordingly. Since we were driving Gary's big Toyota Land Cruiser in the early morning, most people must have mistaken us for a taxi as they gave us a fisting. No one thumbs it here, they fist it!

When we got to the Umfolozi turn-off, we got a little lost and, needless to say, a bit neurotic about the potential consequences of being a couple of misguided idiot tourists in an expensive truck. We got Gary on the cell phone and he put us right. By a little after 7 am, we arrived, paid our entrance fee of 44 rand ($7US), and before long were soon rubbing elbows with some of the most magnificent animals mother Earth has to offer! It was spectacular!!

Gary let us borrow his camera with a nice telephoto lens. This bloke's got the sweetest gear, something you'd expect for a guy who's sold his photography to commercial calendars. But we were just interested in the point and click mode. Auto focus all the way.

The first leg of our safari was the Umfolozi area. We saw all kinds of impala, zebra, buffaloes, warthogs, wildebeest, giraffes, one massive rhino, three lions, and a bunch of other animals whose Afrikaans names I can barely remember. Naturally, we drove by quite slow and burned a few shots on them. They are so used to seeing people and trucks that they are not spooked. It's not like the animals come right up to your truck, but if they're on the roadside, they don't run away.

The second leg was the Hluhluwe (pronounced Shuh-shlu-ee) area. We arrived there around 11:30 or 12pm and basically it was a carbon copy of Umfolozi, that was until the elephant episode. We passed another car and struck up a conversation with them, asking what they'd see, how their day was going, etc. So they gave us the scoop on a herd of elephants grazing just up the road. Hmm, sounds cool. Wild elephants here we come!

So we make our way a couple of kilometers down the dirt track and as we rounded the bend, we were just positively blown away by these massive grey figures ripping the bushes and trees apart with their trunks! We got close and burnt some film on them. We then moved up the road to see if there were more and, lo and behold, there was one.....blocking the road. So we crawled up and kind of gave this big eared beast the hint that we wanted to pass. And mind you, they're far from stupid. They are fully aware of what's going on. So it let us pass by pushing into the bush a bit. We moved up and as we rounded the next bend, we saw the rest of the herd.....with their babies. Now I don't know if you're aware of how protective an elephant is of its young, but much like the AK47-toting taxi drivers, you do NOT want to piss off an elephant. They are otherwise big docile balls of love, but get within an earshot of junior and you're asking for trouble. Well, we did, but not on purpose.

We were focusing on the herd farther down the road, but just before was another elephant off to the left. We started inching up a bit to get a closer look and then it happened, we caught a glimpse of the baby. We were too close and it was too late. Mom got a little perturbed and came charging at us, stamping her feet, bellowing out in that classic elephant trumpeting sound. We could have just about died. Our knees went weak, faces paled, and a warm sensation came over us as our hearts started racing, much like the feeling of passing a police car when you know you've been driving a bit too fast. I jammed the truck into reverse and backed out of there like lightning. It was like, "ok, ok, hey, we get the message, we're out of here! You're the boss, ok, ok!!" Mom stopped and let us go. She didn't feel like making it any more of an issue, and neither did we. Her warning worked and we knew we were number two.

You might wonder what would have happened if she did want to make an issue of it. Well, according to Kimberly, with her training in zoology, an elephant can rip a tree trunk out of the ground with its trunk. And according to Gary, they are quite able to overturn a big truck and kill you inside of it. As I said, they are very intelligent creatures and will not stop until it knows you're dead. But I guess that's mainly an issue if it feels like it's in urgent danger. Still though, that element of danger is what makes it a safari and not some controlled environment zoo. Trust me, African game reserves make the San Diego Wild Animal Park look like a kiddie petting zoo. You are right there with them in their natural environment!

Besides the animals, the scenery was truly spectacular! The savannah setting was so classic, exactly like you'd see in an African documentary on the Discovery Channel. Only this was it and it was for real. We saw plenty of those African acacia trees that kind of look like a table. They are somewhat of crooked but have a flat layer of branches and leaves on top. I don't know the name, but I have photos, so I'll try and label them for future reference. If you care, email me and I'll see if I can get you the name. Anyway, the African bush is magnificent with the mountains, trees, rivers, flowing grass, and all the different shades of brown to green. It's magical and for anyone that loves animals and beautiful scenery, you must take a trip to Africa!

That afternoon, we stopped off at the Hilltop Restaurant for venison burgers. I'm not certain, but I think they might have been impala, if that would fall into the deer category. No matter how you slice it, it was very tasty and quite inexpensive.

By 4pm, our one-day safari was over. It's something I plan to do again in my life, but I think I would try to make it a one-week experience the next time around. The Kruger National Park is considerably bigger and, from what I understand, has more animals to see. Gary and family have been there many times and they say it is unbelievable. But you cannot do it in one day. It's a full-on one to two week trip. I'll keep that on in the back of my mind for my next African run!

About the Author:

William Sukala is a consumate world traveler, adventurer, and writer boasting a passport full of stamps. Instead of settling into a humdrum 9 to 5 existence like the rest of his contemporaries, he decided to pack up, sell everything off, and do a year-long 360 around the globe after graduate school. His travels have taken him to such far off exotic locales as Australia, Mauritius, Mozambique, and French Polynesia. He now lives in New Zealand and works as a self-employed clinical exercise physiologist while working on his PhD. Visit him at: http://www.williamsukala.com or via his current travelogue found at http://nztravelblogue.blogspot.com.